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Beer & Music Articles

05 Feb 2013 BY Jim Taylor

Real Beer, Real Music: With the Little Beer Corp and the Boileroom

Rich Lee 31/01/2013 Staff Writer

In an exciting new partnership between Guildford’s favourite music venue and the Little Beer Corporation, the Surrey music scene looks set to enjoy a year of beer devoted to –and brewed by- the very musicians themselves.

Beer and bands are like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: you could have one without the other but what would be the point? Go and watch any band and, for better or worse, a gig without a swig is merely a performance. Throw down a glass or five of liquid cheer and it becomes an experience. How it ends is up to you and how much experience you can handle.

But even without a soundtrack, the appreciation of beer -real beer- on its own terms, while ever the province of aficionados with malts on their minds and hops in their sights, is enjoying a broader appeal with drinkers than ever before. This new-wave of ale has won over a fresh generation, and it’s the product of artisanal nano-brewers like Jim Taylor and his Little Beer Corporation in Guildford that has helped turn them on to the dazzling variety and characters of real beers and ale.

And now, thanks to the partnership between this one-man brewery and the Boileroom(with inspiration from the ACM’s Mark Bounds) happy punters and music lovers will be able to quaff the venue’s own exclusive ‘Little Boileroom beer’, developed by their team and Jim in his nano-brewery in Slyfield. Not only that, the musicians that grace the Boileroom’s stage will be able to brew beers of their own and be able to promote themselves and their music on the labels.

Jim started the Little Beer Corporation in June 2012. A beer enthusiast and home-brewer for many years, he spent a large portion of his career in advertising working with major brewers like S.A.B. Miller. Travelling all over the world for his work, Jim saw first-hand how micro-breweries in many countries were winning the hearts and taste-buds of beer drinkers wherever he went. This gave him the inspiration to set out on his own.

“I’d always wanted to have a second career,” says Jim. “I thought, Okay, I’ve been doing marketing for 25 years and now I actually want to go into an area where I can create something of my own.” Pouring his passion into the brewery around his day job in marketing, Jim concedes the endeavour can be an exhausting one but exciting in spite of the extra hours and labour involved.

“It’s crazy how many micro-breweries are around now. There are about a thousand in the UK; more per head than in any other country. But they all follow a similar model, selling session beers in big bottles or casks to pubs up and down the country. I’m trying to do something different which is direct-selling.”

"I generally don’t sell to pubs but to the consumer directly. I deliver their beer free of charge. Guildford and Godalming are an affluent and self-contained area and if you can get 1000 people buying your high-quality beer, delivered free of charge; that’s a new business model. Lots of people are getting comfortable with how it works now, you rock up to the door with their beers, you have a nice chat and there’s a warmth to the whole thing which is very nice.”